Blog of Latvian Progressive Rock Band

It's been a while again since the last time we posted anything on our website. Yeah, it remained offline for several months last year, but now it's back with some good news.

First and foremost, we have to say that the recording sessions for our new album 'Gyrosophy' were completed last November, then the whole thing went off to Mr Mehmet Ugur Memis in Ankara, Turkey, who is currently working on the mixdown likely soon to be over. The artwork for the album is also in the making, so we had this idea to break the silence before it breaks itself. :) Right, we're shooting a video tomorrow in our very own rehearsal studio which we are looking forward to sharing with you some time later this month.

Here's a couple of pics (taken by our guitarist/mastermind Ansis Markauss) from last night when were setting up the lighting stuff and cameras.

With basic drum tracks and bass parts recorded in late August and at different times between that and early October, respectively, 'Gyrosophy' is starting to take shape.

Meanwhile, keyboard parts are coming in: Advox has done a tremendous job recording at home during weekends, and the sounds we have heard so far are exactly what the music requires. Lots of Hammond, exquisite soloing, lush synth strings and almost anything else one might ask for. Likewise, Quizz has come up with a few home demos of his guitar parts while getting ready for studio work. Depending on studio availability, his sessions are likely to be scattered across the rest of October and the first half of November.

Pics from the drum recording session (with a little bass guitar) can be viewed here.

Following a lengthy period of silence, Holy Lamb is finally ready to bring you some exciting news. The 20th of August 2012 marked the beginning of the recording sessions for what will result in "Gyrosophy", Holy Lamb's fourth album, their first in just over 10 years. "Like the album title suggests, it feels we're now at the end of a full cycle of spiralling up and down throughout the last decade. Although some of the moves were quite unpleasant and rather discouraging, somehow we managed to retain the balance in what has been a period of steady development for each one of us and the band as a whole. We would have experienced none of that, had we put out a mediocre album every other year, so there's a certain element of wisdom behind our absence too," comments Aigars Červinskis, the band's founder, bassist and vocalist.

With sound engineer Tālis Timorts at the knobs, the band will spend the next few days laying down the drum tracks for the entire album; the recording sessions for vocals, guitar, bass and keyboard parts are scheduled across September and, possibly, reaching into the first half of October. The finished product is likely to consist of eight titles, a couple of which have been stapling the Holy Lamb live set for a few years now, such as "Trouble Vision" and "This Amazing Race". Since most of the new album is purely instrumental, the players are given a great opportunity to bring their skills to the fore. Meanwhile, the band is talking to certain guest players to see if they would be interested in spicing up the sound. Besides the music, the album cover artwork is the next thing to be sorted out. "If we can get the artwork done according to our original idea, you'll probably want a big poster of that image on your wall," says Aigars.

Progress updates from the studio will be published online here at HL Universe, but you can also LIKE the band's Facebook page to be among the first to get the news.

It's getting colder outside so we've been keeping the flame alive. In other words, there has been quite some activity in the Holy Lamb camp. What we've got here is a new logo (the round thing on the right) and a whole new set of promo pictures taken by our long-time friend Muffin.

That's not all, though. We've been invited to perform at The Skys official CD release and birthday party in Vilnius on 11 November (the New York Club is the venue for that). Apart from The Skys and ourselves, the other acts include Appleseed from Poland, Bliuzoholikai from Lithuania, and Il Castello di Atlante from Italy. The next day, 12 November, Holy Lamb and The Skys will travel to Rīga where the two bands will be joined by Latvian fellows Toms Londons at Nabaklab, a nice club in the old town. The Rīga show will be a double celebration of 'Baltic prog' as The Skys will be presenting their new album, Colours of the Desert, to the Rīga crowd and Holy Lamb will light 20 candles on the band's birthday cake!

The June 4 show we did with the Riga-based mixed choir Sōla was an experience to remember

and a wonderful collaboration too. Earlier this year, in March, we got a message from our friend who is also one of the choristers with Sōla. He told us that the conductor of the choir, the talented Mr Kaspars Vēvers, would like to put on a show with Holy Lamb and perform the 30+ minute piece of music 'Jolly Company' ('Jautra sabiedrība') penned by Latvian dadaist composer Juris Ābols (b. 1950). For initial reference, we were supplied with a recording of that piece by the famous Latvian Radio Choir, the entity which records Mr Ābols's music by default. So we had a listen and some good laugh (some of us claimed to hear smatterings of Mr Bungle in it, not far from the truth anyway!), but then the sheet music arrived backed up with Guitar Pro files. That was when things started to look darn serious: numerous tempo/mood changes, weird measures... The composer's favourite must be 7/16!

We started to study the material in mid-April, but our drummer Toms had a 3-week business commitment in Slovakia, so we had to do without him. The more we studied, the more we fell in love with the music... and the more persistent were questions like 'Can we really do this?' and 'How on earth is one supposed to play this part?' Toms returned to the fold only a week before the scheduled first rehearsal with the choir and things were really starting to gel. All of a sudden we were playing with a real drummer (as opposed to the midi hitter in Guitar Pro)! Regardless of what we might have expected, the rehearsals went very well, and we had four of them in the two weeks before the show.

The show managed to attract a four-generation crowd, quite a big one! The concert kicked off with an a capella piece by Swedish composer Jan Sandström, followed by another Ābols' composition called Karawane (extremely weird stuff!). As the choir went off to get changed, we performed a couple of our own instrumental tracks, The Lingering Dream and iINTHESKY. Then the choir came back and WE DID IT! Later we learned that this was the very first time that 'Jolly Company' was performed live in its entirety. The live recording of our version of the piece clocks in at 35+ minutes, so, when the show was over, we knew that we had just got past an important milestone in our timeline. Just like finishing the final page in a chapter of a book with an unpredictable plot. Or probably starting a new one.

By the way, the concert was Mr Vēvers' master's exam for the Latvian Academy of Music. He got a 10 (out of 10), which translates as excellent. In our opinion, though, he deserved an 11!!

Check out some of the pics (megathanks to Ludis Illo!) from the show by clicking on the one below. Hopefully, we'll also be able to share a video with you one day: we spotted a couple of video cameras in the hall.

Damn right! We had a couple of fantastic gigs with local band Busy Bee (see photos here) and Palindrome from Austria (pictures taken by Ludwig Illo are up on his own website) in the months of March and April 2011.

On March 12, we joined Latvian rockers Busy Bee at the Students' club of Latvian Academy of Music. We were invited as special guests to bring a "proggy" edge to the hosting band's and their frontman Flame's birthday party. For Holy Lamb, this was the first live performance to feature lead guitarist Ansis Markauss who joined the band last autumn. Our former drummer Jānis Burmeisters helped us out on this occasion since our current skinsman Toms was unable to make it due to a business commitment. To see a selection of pics from this gig, click on the link above or the photo below.

The Nabaklab gig (April 9) saw Holy Lamb's first ever live appearance with newcomer Toms Circenis on drums. We opened for the mighty Palindrome from Vienna. They did an excellent show at last year's Baltic Prog Fest and it's really great that they decided to come back to the Baltics again. Those interested may check out their profile on MySpace. As regards Holy Lamb's live set, we did a couple of numbers: 'Winterlude', an instrumental track with a fantastic outro section composed by our guitarist Quizz, and 'iINTHESKY' (sorry, we'd done this one in Liepāja last summer, but still new to Rigans).

It's been a while since our last post, hasn't it? Our website had gone offline at some point in November, but now it's obviously back where it used to be. :)

Anyway... As the website remained down for a few weeks we were unable to give you any news, so here we go now. Where do I start? Right. In August 2010, Holy Lamb was joined by its long-time friend Ansis Markauss (of Latvian prog-metal band Morpholatria), a technically advanced guitarist with a lot of brilliant ideas. This basically means that, for the second time in the band's history, we have parted ways with Uldis 'Ludis' Ēlerts. Two months later three of us attended a concert of contemporary music in Riga which showcased a number of Daniel Denis/Univers Zero compositions among other things. That's where we bumped into Toms Circenis, a drummer we have known for years. To cut the long story short, Toms told us that his previous band, Hospitāļu iela, had broken up, so he accepted our offer to replace Jānis Burmeisters, whom we wish the best of success with his tattoo studio in the old town of Riga and the Tesa band. Interestingly enough, Ansis and Toms had already auditioned for Holy Lamb 8 and 11 years ago, respectively, but their services were turned down by the band in favour of other musicians. Not this time though! Work on new material is well underway, so let's keep our fingers crossed that 2011 brings everything it takes to release the fourth Holy Lamb album. Gosh, it's our TWENTIETH anniversary next September!!!!

As we all had quietly expected, the gig at Liepaja's Fontaine Palace last Friday, August 20, proved to be a wonderful experience. It was good to be back and equally good to see that the town has every reason to call itself 'the rock capital of Latvia'. Want to know why? Though I can't speak for the rest of the band, but I do suspect that most of the other guys will join me on this: Louie Fontaine and his crew have done an immensely terrific job to turn the embankment area into something any other Latvian town can only dream about. A club, probably the best in the whole country, a hotel with another live music facility called Fire Bar, a travel agency, a 24h fast food mall, restaurants and plenty of other attractions. Definitely worth checking out!

We arrived at the venue at around 9:00 pm and did a brief sound-check. An hour later we started wondering whether we would be the only live act as there were no signs of the Russian band Infront who were supposed to be the night's main attraction. Shortly before midnight it was clear they wouldn't show up, which was a shame, really. All the entertainment was now entirely up to us and the friendly DJ Marcus! After a quick word with him, mostly related to the number of songs after which we'd be ready to kick off, we found ourselves on this large stage and dived into the opener, 'The Lingering Dream'. As we'd promised before, our live set included a few new tunes besides the older ones. Thus, the enthusiastic Fontaine Palace crowd deserved a premiere of 'I in the Sky', the most recent instrumental addition to our live set which also included, apart from the two aforementioned tracks, 'Whoever Designed this Game', 'Beneath the Skin 1 & 2', 'The Meeting of the Majorminors', 'Eternal Winterland', 'The End - Headturn's Release', 'Trouble Vision', 'Amazing Race' and 'Makhtartam & the Low Brotherhood' (encore).

The gear at Fontaine Palace was absolutely fabulous, the sound was crisp and clear, so it's easy to see why most artists recommend this venue to others. It's a shame we don't have any video footage from Fontaine Palace to share with you, but we did have a photo camera to capture a few moments both on and off the stage (see the page list entry on the right or click on the pic below).

Thanks to all of you who came to the Dasputnik and Holy Lamb gig at the Nabaklab club in Riga last Thursday, July 29. We owe you for making it a night to remember! And apologies for keeping you waiting: there's no other way but to get better at sticking to our schedules. :) See you in Liepaja next Friday, August 20!

Below: Tuomas (left) and Sini of Dasputnik during their show at the Nabaklab.